Congress – Committee of Inquiry: Trump ‘at the center’ of ‘US coup attempt’ on 6/1/2021

The raid on the US Federal Capitol was the “culmination of a coup attempt”: a year and a half after the bloody events of January 6, 2021, which caused shock around the world, the special committee of the House of Representatives appointed the former President at the heart of what he calls a “conspiracy” to stay in power.

Benny Thompson, the Democratic leader of the committee, stressed that the attack on the seat of the federal parliament was made with the “encouragement” of the former president.

The presentation of its conclusions, in a time of high ratings, featured videos that had never been broadcast before, as well as testimonies that, according to the committee, prove that a deliberate campaign was carried out to overthrow the result of the November 2020 elections, which the Democratic won. Joe Biden.

The January 6 attack “was the culmination of a coup attempt,” Mr Thompson said, adding that “we can not hide what happened under the rug” and “the American people deserve to know.”

“Donald Trump was at the center of the conspiracy,” said the black lawmaker, who insisted that “I appear before you tonight not as a Democrat but as an American who has vowed to defend the Constitution,” which “does not only protect Democrats, nor “Only Republicans, it protects us all.”

“Our democracy remains in danger,” he said, adding that “the conspiracy to overthrow the will of the people is not over,” he warned.

“January 6 and the lies that led to this uprising have jeopardized two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy. People are watching what we do here,” Thomson said.

Over the past year, members of the special inquiry committee – seven Democrats, two Republicans – have heard more than 1,000 witnesses, including the former president’s two children, and studied 140,000 documents in an effort to shed light on his actions and gestures. Trump before the attack, during and after.

Former President Trump “called the crowd, stirred up the crowd and lit the fire of this attack,” said Liz Cheney, a black sheep for the tycoon, one of the two members of the GOP committee. “President Trump believed that his followers in the Capitol, and I will put this in quotation marks, did what they had to do. He told his associates who begged him to call for the mob to disband.”

“Those who invaded our Capitol and fought with the police for hours mobilized because of what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, that he was the legitimate president.” “All Americans need to keep in mind that (…) on the morning of January 6 (2021), his intention (…) was to remain President of the United States.”

“War zone”

The videos released by the commission, some for the first time, contain extreme violence.

They show the human sea as it rushes to Congress, attacks police, calls for the “hanging” of then-Vice President Mike Pence, while a protester reads megaphone in Mr. Trump’s collected posts on Twitter, causing delirium.

“It was not a tour of the Capitol,” Thomson was quoted as saying by some Republicans.

Among the images of extreme violence was Donald Trump, who described the protesters as “peaceful”, assuring that there was “love in the air” that icy morning.

Carolyn Edwards, the first policewoman to be injured in the attack on Mr. Trump’s supporters in the Capitol, likened what she experienced to a “war zone.” “I slipped in the blood of people”, it was “massacre”, “chaos”.

Documentary filmmaker Nick Quisted, whose group was watching the far-right paramilitary group “Proud Boys” during the attack, admitted he was shocked by the “anger” of its members.

The special two-hour public hearing of the special committee of inquiry was broadcast live on news television networks, but the Conservative networks simply ignored it – proof, if any, of the polarization of US politics.

Democracy “at stake”

One and a half years after the Capitol attack, millions of Trump’s supporters (55% of Republicans, according to a poll by the Ipsos Institute and Reuters) still remain convinced that he was rigged in the 2020 election. victory, defying the evidence to the contrary.

The key figure, Donald Trump, a few hours before the hearing, praised his fans who were involved in the events of that day: it was, in his view, one of “the most important movements in history for America to recover. Her Majesty “.

The committee reviewed part of the testimony made before it by Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. She revealed that she did not believe her father’s allegations of fraud, but former Justice Minister William Barr.

Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.

On the contrary, the leader of the Republican parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, considers that its only motive is political expediency and has the least “legitimacy” in the “history” of the USA.

His party does not hide that it will bury its work in summary proceedings if it regains control of Parliament in the November by-elections.

Addressing her party, MP Liz Cheney said: “The day will come when Donald Trump will leave, but your disgrace will remain.”

Trump: The biggest movement in US history

Former United States President Donald Trump has confirmed that his January 6, 2021 attack on the Federal Capitol – which the country is reviving, as the long-awaited presentation of the initial conclusions of a special committee of inquiry to the House of Representatives “one of the greatest movements in history for America to regain its greatness.”

After about a year of research, the committee began to present its conclusions at 20:00 (local time; 03:00 Greek time), a time of high ratings.

The commission has vowed to reveal that the chaos of the day was “the fruit of a concerted campaign to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.”

But for the former president himself, the committee did not “think for a moment about the reason that led the large crowd to gather in Washington” on January 6, 2021, as he stressed yesterday, a few hours before the public hearing began, through the social networking site network created by Truth Social.

That day, thousands of his supporters gathered in the American capital to protest the result of the November 2020 election, the defeat of the real estate tycoon. Thousands attacked the US Congress headquarters, causing a global shock.

“January 6 was not a demonstration, it was one of the most important movements in the history of our country for America to regain its greatness,” said Donald Trump. It was about “the elections that were rigged” and the victory that was “stolen”, he added, repeating once again, without any proof, the conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly refuted.

Over the past year, members of the House Special Inquiry Committee – seven Democrats, two Republicans – have heard more than 1,000 witnesses, including the former president’s two children, and studied 140,000 documents in an effort to shed light on the actions and gestures. of Mr. Trump before the attack began, during and after.

Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. But most Republicans reject it, with the main stakeholder, Donald Trump, talking about – what else – “witch-hunting”.